Livestock's Long Shadow

[Veganline.com]

Five pages of executive summery take a few minutes to read and point the curious to the rest of the 375 pages of this free online reference book. I've attached the first section of the file and if "executive summery" doesn't show as a link on the left of your screen, it's .pdf sides 22-26. The text is easy to google and is provided free because the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation was paid by member governments, including the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to come-up with a sound reference book and that is what it reads like: un-emotive, highly referenced, mainstream, even when doing bizarre things like estimating the number of cows in the world (they stop short, and estimate "output of milk").

A surprise for a vegetarian is to find this argument in the mainstream at all. All I knew about cattle and pollution was that Ronald Reagan said that pollution was caused by cows farting, and that the ecological argument to go veggie was something to add-on to veggie web sites in order to attract greens. Surprisingly, now, here are the UN's researchers agreeing with both Ronald Reagan and various veggies, under these five headings on five pages.

• Land Degradation
• Atmosphere and Climate
• Water
• Biodiversity (same argument as land degradation with a different effect)

Land and competition for land- the first and last headings - are diplomatic versions of the same thing. It's undiplomatic to say that cows waste land, used to grow animal feed that could more efficiently be used for people-feed; that cows and goats are wasting or damaging land that could be used for people. Vegetable production is a more efficient way to grow protein than vegetable production for cows for meat and milk. Vegetable production is less likely to expand a desert than a herd of goats. The diplomatic thing stated here is that livestock wears-out land, pushes at the boundaries into jungles, and reduces biodiversity.

Atmosphere and climate are called "the most serious challenge facing the human race", and livestock's makes 18% of greenhouse gases - more than transport - with a concentration of the most potent ones. It's odd how silly that seemed when Ronald Reagan made his point about cows farting and how serious it looks in a UN document: apparently the transition of cow pats into compost produces some of the most toxic fumes.
Water is a similar point to atmosphere and climate, except that it effects people near the livestock more than us in Europe. It's a big point because of what livestock does when it isn't farting or grazing. The effect of livestock on an informal, low-tek water system can be guessed and the effect of vast factory farms in states like Texas with minimal environmental legislation is no better.

Whatever your point of view before reading these five pages, they're likely to be surprising and sobering. And if Oxfam ask you to sponsor a goat next year, or you have a choice to use animal products where you can find an alternative, please don't.